


Grief

by Monochromely



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Gen, I fudged the timeline a lil bc I am a literary ho who wanted symmetric beginnings and endings, I loved working on this for you, I really hope you enjoy!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 04:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monochromely/pseuds/Monochromely
Summary: Mary struggles with the grief she feels following Andrei's death. It's a consuming creature and quite liabletoconsume her... but Natasha and Pierre won't quite let that happen.





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maryabolkonskaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maryabolkonskaya/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, @maryabolkonskaya! I hope that your holiday has been wonderful. I really enjoyed working on this for you; I'm totally of the same opinion on the literal blessing which is Mary Bolkonskaya, lol. <3
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Monochromely (Tumblr: stagpotter)

_i._

Andrei Bolkonsky extinguishes as the first snowfall of winter begins. A last sigh—is it relief?—and then he is gone, and powdered flurries drift gently from the sky in order to kiss the ground.

Mary cannot look at his face.

His skeletal, wasted, dead face.

So she stares outside of the tall, glass window and watches the turn of the season, pale features blank except for the tears that stream unbidden from her eyes.

Down her cheeks.

Into the black folds of her dress.

Down the snow falls.

Softly.

Gently.

Like a dream.

_My only brother is gone._

Like a nightmare.

And she stays like that for sometime.

The horizon is awash with all of the colors of sunset—fiery reds and muted pinks and oranges like dimly lit lanterns.

Next to her, and yet, somehow so very far away, Natasha Rostova is wailing over a corpse, her slender hands collapsed over his lifeless ones. 

The blinding white snow weaves its first blanket onto the world.

Maybe using one of the strings the Fates just snipped.

_My only brother is gone._

Princess Mary, orphaned for the final time, watches as the sun falls away from the sky.

Slowly and then all at once.

It is only when the servants come to take his body that she looks at him for the first time.

The snow’s thick on the ground by now.

And the night is beautiful.

Alive with ancient stars.

They hoist him on their shoulders as though he were a carpet, and they carry him away heavily because he was loved.

Her skeletal, wasted, dead brother Andrei.

The sheet that covers him drips, just a little, just enough for her to see that his desiccated mouth is slightly open with the ghost of his last breath.

When Mary Bolkonskaya finally breaks, a pair of frail, skinny arms envelops her, keeping all of the shattered pieces from hitting the ground.

 _Andrei,_ they weep. _Andrei. Andrei. Andrei._

_ii._

If Old Nikolai Bolkonsky had an inkling that his remarkably plain, annoyingly religious, generally unexceptional excuse of a daughter was now the sole, independent mistress of her fate, the guardian and instructor of her nephew, legal proprietor of all of the various Bolkonsky estates, and here’s the real stunner, _excellent_ at it, he, in his typical contradictory fashion, would turn in his grave, only to communicate his secret pride with a vaguely cantankerous huff.

That’s what Mary likes to imagine anyway.

Life does not stop, and one has to live, so a mere one week after the funeral, she extracts herself from the pocket of grief she had inhabited with Natasha and assumes her position as the head of the Bolkonsky family. She meets with Alpatych several times a day to discuss finances and preparations for their impending move to the Moscow estate. She works with Dessales on young Nikolusha’s education. (Mary teaches him the Word of God, and Dessales plies him excellent French.) Her natural sweetness of being disallows her from ever speaking rudely to a servant, but the blood of the hotheaded man who raised her infuses her instructions to them with a sternness that is quickly obeyed.

It’s a good life, infinitely better than the one she had previously known.

It’s also a busy one.

But busy is good, too.

Infinitely better than not being busy…

Not having something to keep her mind away from—

She takes dinner at seven on the dot—as punctual as her father had been—and dresses for bed shortly thereafter.

She says her prayers, which, amazingly enough, have gotten even longer, and climbs into bed, only to usually clamor out again, convinced that she has to satisfy a responsibility she had forgotten during the day.

It just _can’t_ wait.

Sleep is something she surrenders to nowadays.

Uneasily.

“Look at you,” Natasha murmured while they were getting ready for bed one night.“You are skin and bones and bones and skin, and you look as though you’re more dead than alive. You need to rest or sleep or do something that involves absolutely nothing.”

Her black eyes were lustrous in the candlelight, like ink on a white parchment, and their depths were just as full of meaning. “I’m worried for you, Masha.”

“Look at yourself,” Mary returned—gently, always gently. She reached out, brushed a stray curl from her dear Natalia’s head. “I’m worried for _you_.”

And she was. Natasha was thin and pale, and her golden hair was lank with neglect. She shook her head and sighed but did not shy away from her touch.

“You’re in denial, darling. At least I _know_ that I’m wasting away.”

It stung in the way unpleasant truths usually do—hard. Mary withdrew her hand as though burned and lapsed into stubborn silence; Natasha took the hint and went to her own chamber.

But, all the same, that was the first night she nightmared _him_.

She dreamed that they were children, playing war with sticks and stones and Mary’s straw dollies. 

Every time they injured a doll, a fresh cut would appear on tiny Andrei’s dimpled features.

They played and played until Andrei could not play anymore.

Apparently, she must have screamed out.

She woke up to soft dawn light seeping through the curtains and Natasha’s head pressed into her shoulder.

_iii._

Mary, Natasha, and all of the Bolkonsky family’s servants move to the Moscow estate in February.

(They would have moved in January, but Petya Rostov died like all little boys should not. On a battlefield with a bullet stuck between his eyes.)

And Pierre Bezukhov returns to them in April.

He’s a little thinner than he used to be, and he has a _beard_ now, but ultimately, these small changes are nothing in comparison to the inward metamorphosis that has, as Natasha once so endearingly put it, made him somehow clean, smooth, fresh—as if from a bathhouse. 

 _He’s_ _content_ , Mary thought, absolutely stunned, when she appraised him upon their reunion. She could see it in his dark eyes, which had, heretofore, always been weighed down by some deep sadness (well, _and_ booze, but Mary was of the opinion that booze is sadness). And in the way he held himself. He had always been tall, but now, he seemed even taller, as though he was carrying himself proudly, confidently.

 _And his hands_ , she quickly noticed.

They weren’t trembling.

They used to always tremble.

At first, it enthralled Mary to observe this transformation in her old friend, her brother’s _best friend_.

And it still does on one of her better days.

(Lord, he has a radiant smile now, and he bequeathes it on everyone he talks to. On her. On Nikolai. On Natasha. Mostly Natasha.)

But better days have been coming fewer and far between for Princess Mary.

So it’s both Pierre and _not_ Pierre that sets her off one rainy evening by the fireplace. It’s the stupidly happy look he has on his round face as he pages through a novel as thick as her head. It’s the aura of bliss simply emanating from his person as though he were some sort of a holy beacon. It’s his beautiful love for Natasha that has simply made him all of the more lighter, more metamorphosed, _more_ in general. The bathhouse that keeps on giving. It’s Natasha’s seemingly easy forgetfulness of Andrei’s own love for her. It’s the fact that Mary misses her brother even though she studiously refrains from nearing the mere _thought_ of him. It’s the toe she stubbed on a dumb door earlier this morning. (Not that that has anything to do with Pierre. It’s just another reason to be angry.)

And it’s a little bit of jealousy, too. How can he be so _whole_ when she’s so… not?

Because Pierre’s not been the only person she’s been angry with lately.

Mary has been short with a long list of people and for increasingly minuscule justifications.

It’s complicated.

(But not really.)

“How is it so easy for you?” She hurls the question across the room more sharply than she had intended, and it immediately prods him from his page. The muted light from the fireplace dances across his face, throwing his puzzlement into sharp relief for her. She hastens to soften herself and takes a deep breath, grounds herself in the feeling of the Rosary beads splayed between her fingers. “I mean, dealing with An… _his_ death.”

“Because it’s still hard for me sometimes.” Her voice is small, fragile. She looks down at her lap, tries to steady herself. “And I wish it was not.”

Even if she doesn’t like it, she can perhaps _understand_ why Natasha is able to compartmentalize him away so easily. She’s a buoyant spirit, unable to be kept down for too long, and no one can really reproach her for that. Little songbirds do not like to be caged.

But Pierre?

_Pierre?_

The one man Andrei loved like he did no other?

How can _he_ box away Andrei so quickly, so neatly?

“My dear, Mary,” he murmurs, slowly closing his book. She can see tears sparkling behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Make no mistake, I miss him _every single day_ of my life, and I will continue to miss him for all of my tomorrows to come.”

She looks into his eyes and cannot doubt the simple truth of his words. She looks into his eyes and sees love for Andrei Bolkonsky.

“I walk into this very manor and the ghosts of his stiff footsteps follow me into every room. Do you remember how he primly he walked, as though he had a stick up his back? I miss our quiet evenings in the study, when he would be strewn across one chair, and I the other, and we would argue about politics for hours upon hours. He loved sunsets, even though he would never admit it, and when we walked, his head would always be tilted towards the sky, and sometimes, he would even smile that rare, little smile of his. You know the one, don’t you?”

“Mary…” Her name is choked on his tongue. “You are _not_ alone in missing Andrei Bolkonsky.”

It’s what she wanted to hear.

What she needed to know.

And for the first time since the funeral, she allows herself to shed tears for her dead brother.

“How do you deal with it?” she asks him, her entire face a desperate appeal. “How do you keep together like you do, Petrushka?”

Pierre offers a watery smile and a warm hand; she accepts both gratefully.

“It’s hard sometimes, but I take one breath and then another, and revel—yes, revel—in the gift of being alive. And I _live_ , Mary, actually _live_ , where before I was only really existing. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s dead”—he squeezes her hand tightly—“but it makes me appreciate the time I knew him all the more.”

“You live,” she repeats, a little uncertainly, a little hopefully.

“I live.”

_iv._

Snowfall.

Not the first of the year, but it’s definitely some of the prettiest, caking the dark pine trees like frosting and dusting the ground like sugar. Her thin shoes sink into the mush, and she spreads her wet toes.

The sky is gray, the exact clear shade her brother’s had been.

Like calm waters in the arctic.

“Come snuggle with us, Masha!” Mary glances behind her. Smiles. Natasha and Pierre are wrapped in his large coat. Her arm is tucked firmly over his large belly, and he’s smiling that newfound radiant smile of his, spectacles catching in the wintery light. “You’re quaking, you are, and I’m more than willing to share my personal fireplace with you.”

“And I, the personal fireplace, don’t mind another companion,” Pierre says wryly.

“Thank you,” she laughs, “but we’re almost there. I can see him now.”

Andrei’s gravestone protruding out of the snow. Powdered on the top. Gleaming in the sun. 

She smiles again, and it’s a different kind of smile. 

It tells a story, and the story goes a little something like this:

There was once a young girl who lost her brother, and it was hard there for awhile. Sometimes even impossible. The ghosts he left behind haunted her; the love she had nurtured for him became the very wound she wrapped herself around so tightly, so greatly, that she didn’t quite understand that she was bleeding out herself. And maybe that singular ignorance would have been fatal in the end. Just maybe it would have killed her, slowly but surely, turning her passing years into ticking clocks and hourglasses that have long been flipped… but the people around her, the people who loved her, well, they saved her.

Or maybe they just gave her the tools to save herself.

She is not okay—getting there, but not _yet_ there—and the thing about Natasha and Pierre is that they never ask her to _be_ okay.

They just ask her to be _here_.

For fireside conversations.

For bedside prayers with Natasha.

And long walks with Pierre.

For little Nikolai.

For dinner.

For this beautiful life that God has given her.

And they press their love into her fingertips and tell her to use it for herself.

We’re here for you.

We always will be.

Mary Bolkonskaya kneels before the grave of her dead brother and wishes him a Merry Christmas.


End file.
